CDC sat on civilian DGU data that confirmed Kleck’s estimate of nearly 2.5M/year

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  • Alamo

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    In 1995 Gary Kleck published a study showing that civilian Americans used guns to defend themselves approximately 2.5 million times per year. This far exceeded criminal uses.


    The study was quite “controversial.”


    The next year the centers for disease control began collecting data on defensive gun uses in three surveys in 1996, 1997, and 1998. The data, when analyzed, support Kleck’s estimate of civilian DGUs.


    The CDC never published, released, or acknowledged the data.


    Gary Kleck just recently found the CDC surveys. He published a study of the data here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124326


    Reason’s article on this is here:
    CDC, in Surveys It Never Bothered Making Public, Provides More Evidence that Plenty of Americans Innocently Defend Themselves with Guns - Hit & Run : Reason.com
     

    jedi

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    who was in control of .gov during that time frame.
    those in control did not like the data and thus supressed it.
    im shocked i tell u, shocked.
     

    OakRiver

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    For all those complaining about Congress having to pass a law to ensure that the CDC does not advocate for gun control this is a good example why. Had those surveys happened earlier, and the results made public, I wonder if the AWB would still have passed.
     

    Leadeye

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    CDC was interested in data that produced numbers that leadership wanted to hear. Like everywhere else bosses tend to surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear. When they do a good job of it they get more money.

    Always follow the money
     

    rhino

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    In 1995 Gary Kleck published a study showing that civilian Americans used guns to defend themselves approximately 2.5 million times per year. This far exceeded criminal uses.


    The study was quite “controversial.”


    The next year the centers for disease control began collecting data on defensive gun uses in three surveys in 1996, 1997, and 1998. The data, when analyzed, support Kleck’s estimate of civilian DGUs.


    The CDC never published, released, or acknowledged the data.


    Gary Kleck just recently found the CDC surveys. He published a study of the data here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124326


    Reason’s article on this is here:
    CDC, in Surveys It Never Bothered Making Public, Provides More Evidence that Plenty of Americans Innocently Defend Themselves with Guns - Hit & Run : Reason.com


    I don't believe the results! Shannon Watts says it never happens, so they have to be wrong. That's clearly why the CDC results were suppressed... clearly in error because they refuted Shannon Watts' assertions 20 years in the future.
     

    OutdoorDad

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    Here is the reason it can’t be believed:

    If true, there would have been at least 2.5 million more violent crimes in America. And that means that we live in a far more violent society than your average suburbanite can imagine. And you can’t believe what you can’t imagine.

    Figure the actual number of thwarted crimes is doubled. Once by firearm, and a second crime avoided by the evil doer’s memory of having the first one end badly.
     

    Alamo

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    I am kind of shocked at the reaction pro-gun sSA folks are having to this "news". I thought this leaked over 20 years ago.

    Gary Kleck’s paper analyzing the CDC data is dated 14 Feb 18. In it he states:

    It is less widely known that CDC itself conducted surveys in which huge nationally representative samples of the U.S. adult population were asked about DGU, as part of their Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). CDC never reported the results of those surveys, does not report on their website any estimates of DGU frequency, and does not even acknowledge that they ever asked about the topic in any of their surveys.


    I only recently discovered that CDC had indeed asked about DGU in their BRFSS surveys, stumbling across the DGU question while searching through the questionnaires used in the surveys for questions on other topics. Once I found the key question in the questionnaire for one year’s BRFSS, I searched through the questionnaires for all the other years, from 1984 through 2016, and found the DGU question had been asked in the 1996, 1997, and 1998 surveys.

    He has been studying this for decades now, and if this data have been available earlier he would have known about it.
     

    Alamo

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    There Is an update to the Reason article that says Kleck has withdrawn his paper temporarily because the CDC data was not from a national survey as he had thought, but surveyed a certain number of states during each of the three years It asked about defensive gun uses. I doubt it changes the overall trend of things, but will require recalculating the numbers
     

    actaeon277

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    There Is an update to the Reason article that says Kleck has withdrawn his paper temporarily because the CDC data was not from a national survey as he had thought, but surveyed a certain number of states during each of the three years It asked about defensive gun uses. I doubt it changes the overall trend of things, but will require recalculating the numbers

    I was tracking back to find the original article, data, or whatever.
    But it pointed me to Kleck's papers, about 15 of them I think, but it didn't show this one.
    Now I know why.
     
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